


painting the roses red

by WomanOf1000Faces



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Hatter backstory, Sad Ending, Tragedy, alternate dimension hopping outcomes, light angst takes a detour to fluffy romance and then swings back into major pain, mentions of Emma Swan, mentions of doctor/rose, which given that this is Hatter backstory should kind of be evident
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:28:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28486860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WomanOf1000Faces/pseuds/WomanOf1000Faces
Summary: "The first time he meets her, she's cursing up a storm."Rose is stranded with no way home. Jefferson just wants a realm-jumping partner. Falling in love is inevitable. A happy ending is not.
Relationships: Mad Hatter | Jefferson/Rose Tyler
Kudos: 1





	painting the roses red

**Author's Note:**

> So this idea first infected my brain while I was trying to work out backstory for a MadSwan multichapter. That fic has yet to materialize, but here, have this sad thing instead.
> 
> I normally do ship Nine/Rose and Ten/Rose, but this was too good to pass up.

The first time he meets her, she’s cursing up a storm.

She’s very clearly not from his world - at least not from anywhere near the Enchanted Forest - and not from Wonderland, where they are now, either. Her hair is shorter than most women in either world cut theirs, only falling to her shoulders, and her fitted denim trousers and blue leather jacket don’t seem native to any world he’s visited (and he’s visited quite a few). The big tip-offs are the long, bulky device slung across her back and the smaller one in her hands, the one she’s swearing at. The only time he’s seen anything like that is when he went to what he likes to call the Grayscale world, to fetch the mad scientist.

Devices like the ones the girl has generally come from worlds without magic, worlds that the hat can’t take him to. The Grayscale world is somewhere in between - he can barely reach it. Wherever this girl is from, he’s willing to bet it doesn’t have any magic at all, because if it did her devices wouldn’t work and she clearly expects them to.

He’s never met another realm jumper before. He wants to meet her.

He circles around to be in her field of vision and approaches her, offering the charming smile that usually gets women like the poor gullible queen to trust him. “Excuse me, miss, but I couldn’t help noticing that you seem to be in some distress. Can I help you?”

She looks up and stops pounding her fist on the edge of the small round flat thing long enough to glare at him. “Not unless you’re into quantum physics and know how to get a dimension hopper working again.”

“Well, in a manner of speaking, I am and I do,” he shoots back, undeterred. “However, my methods rely on magic, and since I suspect you’re trying to get to a place where that doesn’t exist...”

She rolls her eyes. “Right. Jus’ what I needed. I’m stuck someplace that looks like a Tim Burton knockoff movie, with no way home and no way out, an’ now I’m talking to somebody that believes in magic.”

He sticks out his hand for her to shake. “Jefferson’s the name. Welcome to Wonderland.”

The girl doesn’t take his hand, instead throwing her head back and laughing like she’s about to go insane. Who knows, maybe she feels like she is; most people do the first time they end up here. “That’s it. I’ve officially gone mad. Mum said this would happen. Always told me the dimension hopping would scramble my head.” She looked around, barely suppressing a slight hysterical chuckle. “Never thought I’d imagine I was in someplace from a kids’ book, though.”

“Your realm tells stories about Wonderland?” Jefferson asks, genuinely curious. He’d heard things like this could happen, usually as a result of travelers from one realm settling in another. With Wonderland, though...people don’t really leave. With the exception of him.

“If that’s what you wanna call it, yeah.” The girl shoves the round device into a jacket pocket and folds her arms. “They got a Cheshire Cat around here, then? Mad Hatter? Queen of Hearts?”

The last name sends an involuntary shudder through him. He’s never met the Queen in person, and he plans on keeping it that way. “I don’t know about the cat thing, but the Queen of Hearts is...” he glances over his shoulder “...unfortunately real. Mad Hatter, though...” A thought occurrs to him. “I don’t know if that’s what you’re referring to, but I do have a magic hat that I travel with.”

“Of course you do. What, do you wear it, then?” The girl doesn’t seem curious - more resigned.

“Not exactly. More like jump through it.”

“‘S it bigger on the inside?”

There’s a kind of bitterness in her mocking tone, though Jefferson isn’t sure why. “Occasionally.”

The girl looks like she might be about to cry at that, so he tries a different tack. “How about you? How’d you get here? I didn’t know the non-magic realms had portaling equipment.”

“It’s not really a portal. More like a really fancy vortex manipulator. Only it’s broken now - I don’t know why. There’s nothing wrong with it, it just won’t work.”

“Magic tends to do that with devices that aren’t built to handle it,” Jefferson comments. “I could offer you a lift, but I don’t think I’d be able to get you where you’re looking for. My hat only does worlds with magic.”

There’s something broken in the girl’s eyes as she considers him. “Yeah, why not,” she says eventually. “Traveled in a little blue box once before, then I traveled with a big yellow button around my neck, then with this.” She patted the jacket pocket. “Might as well try going by magic hat.”

For some reason, her acquiescence excites Jefferson, though he doesn’t have a clue why. “Okay. I’m going to need you to wait here for a second - the hat can only take as many people back as came through, and I came by myself today. But I’ll be right back for you and take you with me, I promise.”

He wouldn’t leave his worst enemy wandering around Wonderland alone and not knowing what they were doing. And this girl...she’s like him. A traveler. He’s not going to leave her behind.

“Yeah, sure.” She shrugs and glances around. “I’ll just...dunno, say hi to the March Hare and the Dormouse for ya, right?”

Fear grips Jefferson, sudden and cold. She really thinks this is all in her head. She thinks this realm is like whatever children’s story she’s familiar with - and if the story she knows is meant for children, he’s sure it was nothing like this place actually is. He has to get her out. “Um, no, maybe just stay where you are. Easier for me to find you. Try not to get into trouble!” He shouts the last bit over his shoulder, already sprinting for the mirror he entered by, back at the toadstools.

***

It’s a simple matter to get back to the Enchanted Forest, and simpler to secure a piglet from the nearest farmyard to haul back through the hat with him. It shouldn’t matter that he brought an animal through to take a human back; the hat’s rules only seem to care about living bodies. He’s given up trying to explain why it is how it is.

He swears he’s only gone for fifteen minutes, tops, but when he gets back to where he left the girl (the pig now gone to run around wherever), she isn’t there anymore. He’s not a good enough tracker to be able to tell whether she was taken or just wandered off, but it doesn’t ultimately matter. He knows in whose hands she’ll end up.

Flowers are terrible gossips, and it doesn’t take him long to learn where the Queen’s guards have taken her.

Afterwards, he won’t really remember how he got to her in the dungeons, although he suspects a few people might have ended up dead along the way. He’ll just remember seeing her huddled behind the golden bars of her cell, hugging her knees to her chest and sobbing, all her devices gone and looking more lost than he knew anyone could look.

“It’s all real,” is all she can say when he pulls her out. “I’m not mad. This is real...and I’m never gonna go home.”

He slips his hand into hers and pulls her after him into a run.

Normally when he takes people into the hat (not that it happens all that often), they’re awed and astounded, looking around everywhere. The girl is too distraught to take in much of anything, but Jefferson can’t really blame her. Besides, if things work out, he’s hoping she’ll have plenty more opportunities to have a look around.

They make it back to the Enchanted Forest, and set out for his house, not talking much. Jefferson was supposed to pick up some red roses from the Queen’s garden for a rather fussy wizard, but the client will just have to wait. Priorities. He’s got someone to take care of for the moment.

Not that he’s being some good Samaritan or something. He quite definitely has an agenda. It’s just that that agenda could end up benefiting his new acquaintance, too.

“So if you’re basically the Mad Hatter,” the girl begins.

“I’m not crazy,” he assures her.

“Yeah...but anyway,” she presses on, “does that mean you have an Alice waitin’ for you where we’re going?”

What does that have to do with anything? “I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says. “Do you mind telling me your name, though?”

She thinks about it, then shakes her head. “Not just now,” she says. “I’ve crossed too many parallel worlds. Wrong word in the wrong place can send whole realities crashing down.”

“Well, I’d certainly like to avoid that.”

***

Time passes. He doesn’t take jobs while he’s waiting for her to recuperate - he’s got enough money to last. Whatever she went through before he found her is anyone’s guess, but he does know she was in the clutches of the Queen of Hearts for at least half an hour before he got her out. She’s earned as much time to find her feet as she needs.

Physically, she seems to be fine. Mentally and emotionally, she’s clearly grieving for something or someone - or maybe several someones, it’s difficult to tell. She hides the pain well, but Jefferson learns to recognize the look in her eyes when he approaches bad topics, like her past love life or family, or doctors. Or time.

Of course, the mystery only fascinates him more, and the fact that she still refuses to tell him her real name adds to the effect. The first morning, a week into her stay, that she comes downstairs to breakfast in local clothing - a dress he’d procured at twice the value from the woman whose pig he’d stolen - he realizes that she’s actually quite pretty.

But he’s not looking for love. He’s looking for a realm-jumping partner.

To his delight, he doesn’t even have to bring the subject up; she does it for him, something over a fortnight in.

“So what is it you do for a living, then?” she asks one evening. “‘Cause you’ve got all the money you could need, but I never see you work.”

“That’s because I haven’t been taking jobs the past few weeks,” he explains. “I use the hat to travel to other realms and procure items for clients - items that can’t be found in this realm. They pay me for the items, and for my time and trouble.”

“So the traveling is your job? Thought it was just something you did for fun.”

“It’s both,” he says simply. “Who ever said you couldn’t do something you enjoy for a living?”

She smiles, but the remembering look is in her eyes again. “Quite a lot of people, actually.”

“Sorry.” He isn’t sure whether he means for whatever happened to her, or for inadvertently bringing it up.

“‘S all right. I didn’t mind at the time, ‘cause I didn’t know any better. An’ then I met someone who told me I could be different, and I got to get away from it all and have a better life.” She looked away and quieted, and Jefferson knew better than to ask questions.

A moment later, she turned back to him. “D’you reckon I could work with you? Realm jumping or whatever you call it? Might not know much about magic, but I can learn, and I want to earn my keep around here.”

Jefferson couldn’t contain his triumphant grin. “I suppose you could help every now and then.”

***

He doesn’t take her to Wonderland with him, when he goes back to fetch the roses, but he takes her on his next trip, a short hop over to Oz. Evidently this is also a world that has made its way into the fiction of her native realm, although she seems to expect a greater preponderance of wicked witches and flying monkeys for some reason. At one point somebody asks her name and Jefferson holds his breath and she says, “Right, sorry, I’m Elphaba.”

It’s not her real name; he’s sure of it. He has to ask, anyway, once they get back home, but she laughs and shakes her head. “Thought I’d try a made-up one, see what happened.”

The pseudonyms continue to pop up every time they go to a new world. In one realm that’s mostly ocean and inhabited chiefly by sailors and pirates, she introduces herself as Elizabeth; in another realm full of pyramids and dog-headed spirits she insists on calling herself Cleo. When they go to Camelot, she goes by Igraine. When, after several months of working together, he reluctantly brings her with him on a Wonderland trip, she takes the name Alice.

“Does this have anything to do with what you were asking me about when I first brought you home?” Jefferson asks her. “About if I had an Alice waiting for me?”

“Nope,” she says, perfectly straight-faced. “Nothing at all.” But she starts going by Alice when they’re in the Enchanted Forest as well, and he starts calling her that himself for lack of any better option.

She tells him her world’s stories about the realms they visit, sometimes. Some of them make him laugh at their ridiculousness; others make him sad or annoyed at the distortion involved. Rumplestiltskin, for example, should be taken much more seriously.

He waits quite a while before taking her anywhere near Rumplestiltskin, and he prefaces that introduction with a long list of warnings before they make the trip. He’s never quite comfortable working for the imp, although he knows better than to let it show, and he doesn’t like showing her the sketchier people he works with sometimes. But Rumplestiltskin pays better than anyone, and this job is easy - a quick hop to Grayscale world for some of the bottled lightning they call electricity.

When Rumplestiltskin sees her, he lets out a high-pitched giggle of delight that makes the hair on the back of Jefferson’s neck stand on end. “So this is the timorous beastie you brought back with you from Wonderland.”

For some reason, she flinches at that, but otherwise remains calm. Jefferson wraps his fingers around hers on the handle of the hatbox she’d insisted they get (after a close call where the hat had been blown off his head on their way to a job).

“Who I bring with me and why is my business,” he says firmly. “Alice is my partner and if that’s a problem you can find a different realm jumper.”

“Oh, no, no problem at all, dearie,” Rumplestiltskin says, grinning and moving in closer, edging in on her personal space. “I am curious about the name, though - I would have thought you’d have something more...flowery.”

If looks could kill, hers would leave the Dark One dead on the floor. “You can’t scare me,” she says evenly. “I’ve seen things way, way worse than you could ever hope to be, an’ fought some of ‘em, and walked away. Nothin’ these realms can throw at me is ever gonna scare me, an’ you’re not even the worst of the lot. You just think you are ‘cause you’re really really old an’ you know a thing or two about me, but I’ve seen older and smarter. I’m the Bad Wolf, and I’ve got nothin’ left to lose that you can touch.”

A sane being, Jefferson thinks, would have run away at the look in her eyes, but Rumplestiltskin just displays that deranged giggle again. “Oh, yes you do, dearie. You just don’t know it yet.”

She pales, and for some reason won’t look at Jefferson, who decides it’s high time he took some control of the situation. “Are we going to do this job or not?”

They do the job. They get paid. They go home.

At some point, his house in an out-of-the-way village had come to mean ‘home’ for both of them.

***

She won’t talk at first about the things she and Rumplestiltskin said to each other, but very, very late that evening, she comes and finds Jefferson and tells him a story. A story about a lonely girl with no future and a lonely man who lived in a magic box and wanted to give her all the future he could, and all the past too.

She doesn’t tell him everything that night, but stories keep on coming over the following days and weeks and months. Stories about a man who can change his face, about plastic and skin and ghosts, about monsters and wonders and time.

She tells him about the Bad Wolf, and he says it sounds like magic to him, and she says no, it couldn't be, because her world really doesn't have that.

"It could, and you just don't know it," he argues. "Like Grayscale world, where they think it's all science."

She shakes her head. "I'd have found out," she says. "He woulda known."

_He_ , Jefferson learns obliquely, is the man she had loved, in her own world. He only asks once if the man had loved her back.

"He did," she says, then, a little wistfully, "Think he mighta been the last person in the universe to figure it out, though."

In time, Jefferson tells her stories of his own. Stories about his childhood, about how he learned to use the hat. He tells her, reluctantly, about some of the episodes he's not proud of, like helping Rumplestiltskin make his monster. She doesn't condemn him or condone him, just listens.

The blonde in her hair grows out, leaving inches of brown close to the scalp. They have more than enough for color-change spells to keep it as it was, but she buys a restoring spell instead, to turn the bleached ends their natural color. It suits her, but Jefferson is still curious as to why she chose it.

"It was time to change," she says simply.

***

They’re spending their evening in a different realm, one with odd suits for the men and short hair and dresses for the women and a beverage called gin and cars. And a form of music called jazz, which she recognizes and has privately named the realm after: Jazz World. They’ve come here before for a job, but tonight is for fun; he offered to take her anywhere she wanted to go for the night, and she’d picked here.

It’s not his favorite realm - the cars bother him and the pomade currently in his hair will be a sticky mess to get out afterwards - but she takes in everything with wide dark eyes. Her dress is deep pink with glittery gold trim, and her hair is pinned and curled to look much shorter than it is. The colored stuff on her lips isn’t bright red like most of the women in the room, but rather a couple of shades darker than the dress. The heels on her shoes are high enough to cripple the unwary, but she moves in them with ease.

Later, he will remember these details with unusual clarity. Later, he will remember thinking she is absolutely beautiful.

He invites her onto the dance floor with him, and she gets that look for a moment that says there’s a story here, but for once she doesn’t tell it. She takes his hand and follows him, smiling, and he shows her how to dance the way the people here do. Turns out she’s a little familiar with the basics already, just a different style. It doesn’t take her long for her to fall into his rhythm, and they kick and spin and shuffle with the best till they’re out of breath. When the occasion calls for it, he holds her close in his arms - but not for very long, because those shoes put her eyes nearly on a level with his, and he’s not sure he wants her to see what he’s thinking.

During a change in the songs, he leads her off the floor for a breather. He leans against a pillar, and sees her watching him. “What?” he asks.

Her head tilts to one side. “Why’d you rescue me from the Queen of Hearts? I know it was dangerous, an’ you didn’t know me or anything, but you came and got me, and you basically took me in. An’ you didn’t have to do any of that. So why?”

It’s late and maybe the gin’s affected the part of his brain that would normally think more carefully about such things, because Jefferson says simply, “Because you were like me. I knew right away you were a traveler, and I’d never met anybody else who was. And the portal jumping is fun on your own, but -”

“But it’s better with two,” she finishes for him, and even though that’s not how he would’ve put it, she’s absolutely right.

She’s directly in front of him now, with that little smile she gets when she’s about to blindside him, and then she grabs his coat lapels and pulls him in suddenly and kisses him. He reciprocates without even stopping to think and she tastes like gin and lipstick and table mints and this wasn’t what he had in mind at all when he spotted her in Wonderland and decided to rope her into his life but he’s so glad it happened this way anyhow.

She pulls back for a moment, giving him a questioning look as if to say ‘Shall we continue?’ Jefferson clears his throat and remembers how to breathe; there’s one thing he needs to get straight first. “I’m not him.”

“No,” she says. “You’re Jefferson. My Mad Hatter.”

They crash back together again, her arms around his neck and his hands in her hair, and pretty soon they get kicked out into the cold for public semi-indecency, but neither of them much cares.

***

Nothing huge changes for them after that. They continue to realm jump for fun and profit. They continue to live on opposite sides of the same house. They continue to stay up unreasonably late into the night talking about anything that comes to mind.

But her stories of the realm she left behind grow fewer and fewer, and she seems more present most of the time, with her eyes not turning sad and distant at the mention of things that used to trigger memories. When they walk or run or sit together, their hands find each other, not a perfect fit, but undeniably right all the same.

They kiss frequently - Jefferson hadn’t realized before just how many situations were ideal for kissing her until he was allowed to do so. The best, he privately thinks, are when they’ve been running for their lives through a faraway realm and barely make it back to the hat with their lives and their take, and stumble out into the Enchanted Forest breathless and full of adrenaline, and they fall into each other laughing and proceed to steal any breath the other had left.

She is simply stunning, and he loves her. Jefferson makes sure to tell her this, that he loves her, as soon as he figures it out, because even if she barely mentions her history anymore, it’s still very much present at times, and he doesn’t want her to think he’s the last person in the multiverse to realize. Her last lover hurt her; Jefferson will do better.

They’re at home when he tells her, by the fire late at night, and she smiles with her tongue in her teeth and says, “An’ I love you.” Like it’s a natural fact, but not one she takes for granted.

Time goes by, largely unnoticed by either of them, but one day while they’re walking in the village they overhear gossip of some foreign king or other looking for a bride, and it puts Jefferson in mind of something he ought to do.

“We should do that,” he says without thinking. “Get married.”

She positively grins. “All right then.”

The world briefly stops turning as Jefferson absorbs what he just said, and what she just said. He looks at her sheepishly. “I meant to do that better. With a ring and so forth.”

“You can if you want. I don’t mind saying it again,” she says cheekily.

They end up beating the king to it. She usually wears trousers these days, on account of the adventuring and her being more used to them, but for the wedding she wears a dress, a white one. Jefferson buys a new coat for the occasion, long and rusty orange. They use the name ‘Alice’ for the ceremony, but later in the dark, when it’s just the two of them, she whispers her real name in his ear.

It’s the only time he’ll hear it, and he’ll never speak it. Names have power, and if the wrong word in the wrong place can collapse realities, then Jefferson’s not going to take any chances. He likes this reality just the way it is, thanks.

***

She comes in from a trip to the village one afternoon smiling but nervous. Jefferson reads her expression correctly and goes to help her with her cloak as a pretext for getting too close to avoid conversation. “Is something the matter?”

She’d had something on her mind for weeks now, he realizes, but since it hadn’t been anything major enough to be this obvious, he’d assumed she would tell him if and when she was ready. He knows it’s not the marriage - that’s several months ago now, and while they aren’t exactly still in the honeymoon phase, they’re comfortable with each other. He’d know (he thinks) if that were the problem.

He tries to meet her eyes, but she looks at the floor. “I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to realm jump for a while,” she says quietly. “I went to see Nan in the village today...and I’m pregnant.”

The information trickled slowly into Jefferson’s brain, the full import of it finally coming to bear as he took her in. Simultaneously, he realized why she was nervous. She was worried that he would be angry because of how this would change their lives, because she wouldn’t be able to work with him for months, and not always after that, because there was a new tiny person now depending on them.

How could he ever be angry about that? How would he ever be anything but ecstatic?

He turned her face up to him and kissed her soundly, only pulling away because he couldn’t control the smile forming on his face. “That’s wonderful,” he said. “And I will miss having you along but you are absolutely not realm jumping for the next...however long. You and the baby need to stay safe, and that’s the most important thing.”

Relief, hope, and joy kaleidoscope over her face. “I thought that was what you’d say. But Nan...she said the life you lead, you wouldn’t want children. Tried to tell me I should get rid of it.”

Jefferson wondered how much trouble he would be in if he poisoned Nan with a shrinking mushroom and sent her down the river in a wooden toy boat. Probably a lot of trouble, since she was the only midwife in the area. “Well, she was wrong.” He cupped her face and fixed her with a serious look. “I would change my whole life for you, and for our child. Doing without a partner for a few months is not that much to ask.”

***

Realm jumping really is better with two, but there is no question in Jefferson’s mind about her staying put at least until the baby is born. Even the most unthreatening realms can harbor some nasty surprises for the non-native, and while he knows she’s more than capable of looking after herself, she needs her peace and rest. Not to mention that no one knows just what the effects of portal travel on unborn babies are, and he does not want to be the one to find out.

Equally impracticable is the idea of him ceasing to take jobs until she can join him again. They have a good bit put by, but not enough to keep them for all that time, and they have a third mouth to feed coming along soon. Jefferson does the jobs, gets paid, and comes home as quickly as possible. He can stop and smell the flowers once she’s back by his side.

One evening he comes home with his long black coat nearly destroyed by kalidah claws and smelling like poppies and blood, and takes a long look at her sitting by the fire, feet propped up and two months from giving birth.

“I think maybe after the baby’s born I should look for a different line of work,” he says.

She looks him up and down and takes in his appearance. She doesn’t say anything, just waits for him to finish explaining.

“We could try and keep going, hire someone to watch her while we’re gone,” he continues (a passing witch had predicted the baby would be a girl, and they’d run with the assumption so they wouldn’t have to keep saying ‘it’). “But something could happen to one of us, or both of us. It could have happened to me today, and then what would happen to you? I just couldn’t stop thinking about it all the way back. I want her to grow up with both of us, regardless of everything else. We can sell the house and take what we’ve saved, go build a cottage in the forest and live off the land. Or wherever we want to go.”

She eyes him cautiously. “You wouldn’t miss the adventure? Goin’ to see new worlds, new people?”

“I would,” he admits. “But that’s not the most important thing here. You are, and our daughter is. We could keep the hat around for if we just wanted to take a trip for a day, to someplace relatively quiet. If you wanted.”

A long quiet ensues. “I’d miss it, too,” she admits. “The runnin’, the excitement. But I think you might be right - about stoppin’ just for a while.” She runs a hand over his back, over the shreds of his coat. “Don’t wanna see you come home looking like this does.”

So he puts the hat away in its box and puts the box at the very back of a dark cupboard, because they are travelers and adventurers with stars in their eyes, but they are also now people with responsibilities and they can’t live day by day anymore.

He doesn’t take jobs from then on, staying close to home during the last weeks, and he’s never really forgiven Nan for what she once said, but he still runs to fetch her once the pains start because she’s the only midwife for miles. The birth is long and frightening, all the more so because he knows nothing about what’s going on. At last, early-early in the morning, their daughter slips squalling into the world.

And his whole life changes. He thought everything had changed when he first met his chosen partner, when she kissed him in the dance hall, when she told him her name. It did, but this is a wholly different kind of change. His wife has his heart, forever, but everything he does now, for the rest of time, he will always be bearing in mind how it will affect his child.

“Does she get a real name?” he whispers, only half-joking, once Nan has been paid and gone away.

“Grace,” his wife says softly, eyes on the baby in his arms. “If that witch was right...I wanted her name to be Grace.”

***

They don’t move right away. She needs to rest and heal from having the baby, and he needs to find somebody to buy the house and sell them land somewhere else, and there are any number of things to take care of. So they stay put for a bit.

In retrospect, they should maybe have left for parts unknown as soon as it was remotely feasible. Considering who it is that finds them, though, that might not have done any good.

Rumplestiltskin turns up in their living room eight weeks after Grace is born. He giggles manically at their startlement and gets entirely too close to their baby and Jefferson is reminded suddenly of what the imp said, about things you can lose and don’t know it yet.

“What do you want?” he says, perhaps not as politely as is prudent, but he just wants Rumplestiltskin gone. That part of their lives is over.

“Oh, if I answered that even halfway truthfully, you couldn’t begin to give it to me, dearie,” Rumplestiltskin chuckles. “But from you, I’ll settle for a quick retrieval trip.”

“I don’t do that anymore,” Jefferson says, but the Dark One continues on as if he didn’t hear.

“The Queen of Hearts stole something from a student of mine,” he says, “a magical object that, unfortunately, I rather do need. You and your wife are going to fetch it for me.”

“No we’re not,” she says evenly, holding Grace a little closer. “You haven’t got anything we need.”

“Not even...enough gold to stay where you are, in your own house, and never have to work again?” Rumplestiltskin offers.

“Except, of course, when you need something,” Jefferson comments dryly.

“No, no. You have my solemn word that when you return from Wonderland, I will never ask you to undertake any task for me again. And you will be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. Your daughter, and any other little bundles you decide to pop out, will want for nothing.” He claps his hands. “Think about it!” With that, Rumplestiltskin vanishes in a puff of red smoke.

***

They argue about it.

They’ve fought before, of course, but this is probably the worst ever (and later, that knowledge and the memory will hurt him like nothing else). She wants nothing to do with it; he’s willing to take a chance.

In the end, what convinces her is the prospect of not having to move. She’s been uprooted enough times in her life, and the idea of never having to move again is tempting enough to conquer her fears.

They pay a woman to watch Grace, kiss their daughter goodbye, and leap through the hat into Wonderland.

It’s been a long time since they’ve been there, and they spend a few minutes taking everything in, the random weirdness that somehow ends up being beautiful in its own twisted way. Jefferson looks all around and appreciates it, but when he looks at her, he can’t help but think she’s more beautiful than all of it.

Giving up realm jumping in exchange for a life with her? No contest.

***

Of course, they get caught.

They find the magic item for Rumplestiltskin, and then the Queen’s guards find them and drag them away separately to the dungeons, and Jefferson is alone in the dark with no way to get to her and all he can think about is that he’s wearing the coat he was married in. He’s wearing the long orange coat he bought for the wedding because his usual black one got destroyed by kalidahs, and he can’t lose his wife while he’s wearing what he married her in. He just can’t.

He can’t keep track of time very well - time is always funny in Wonderland, anyway - but he’s fairly sure he’s there in the cell for hours before the Queen comes for him. She comes in with no veil or mask or fan to hide behind, and he knows she only unmasks for people she’s going to hurt. The fact that she’s already barefaced means that she’s already been at work hurting the only other prisoner here.

That knowledge, picturing her in pain, torments him worse than anything the Queen inflicts on his body (or makes him inflict on himself, while she holds his heart in her hand and smiles).

Eventually, his heart is shoved back into his chest, and that makes him more afraid than ever, because the only reason she would do that is if she wanted him to feel something truly terrible, and he can think of all too many ways for that to play out.

She is already there in the throne room when the guards drag him in and throw him down, her loose brown hair matted and disheveled, blood staining the adventurer garb that doesn’t fit her quite right anymore, not since the baby. Grace is at home in the Enchanted Forest, and she will never know what happened to them, probably won’t even remember them.

The Queen of Hearts walks back and forth between them, swinging the magic device by its golden chain and talking about something, but Jefferson can’t hear the words. His eyes are fixed on the injured, kneeling woman across the room from him struggling to breathe. She’s been hurt worse than he has. She’d escaped from the Queen before; Her Majesty was likely more vindictive on that account.

Was that all he did, buy her time? He pulled her out of the dungeon and ran and bought her three more years of life.

No. This is not how their story ends.

Before the guards can stop him, he breaks their grip - they’re nothing but a pack of cards - and lunges across the room for her. He hauls her up onto her feet and pulls her along after him, and by some mercy from who-knows-where she is able to run. They run out of the palace and through the hedge maze and through the fields where he first found her. Her hand is in his and he can see the toadstools and they are going to make it. They’re going home. They don’t have the device they were sent for, but they’re alive and they’re going back to their daughter. Rumplestiltskin can keep his lifetime supply of gold and stuff it up his nose.

Then the Queen of Hearts materializes in front of them in a whirl of red smoke and he knows she was toying with them all along.

The pair of them stumble to a halt on the brick-paved path and fall in a heap, and when Jefferson manages to get himself up onto his hands and knees, he sees her, his partner, his bride, the love of his life, kneeling at the feet of the Queen of Hearts, who has her heart in one gloved hand.

Someone is screaming, and it’s probably him.

The Queen smiles, and closes her hand, and the heart she is holding crumbles into ash that sifts through her fingers.

Ash that Jefferson can feel sifting onto his shoulders, into his hair, because he’s finally managed to move forward, and he’s cradling his wife in his arms, her head on his chest, and he’s sobbing and screaming for her to come back, pleas that eventually collapse into a stream of semi-hysterical ‘no’s.

True Love’s Kiss doesn’t bring back the dead, but he tries it anyway, then breaks down and kisses her forehead over and over again softly, a mute apology. The Queen is standing over them, laughing, and something deep inside him breaks.

The item they were sent for is hanging by its chain from her waist. Jefferson doesn’t care about it, but he’s not going to let her have that victory, not today. He grabs for it and savagely pulls, and it comes free, and he clutches it in one hand and holds his wife close and scrambles to his feet, launching himself through the mirror before anyone can stop him.

***

He sets her down in their room, laid out on their bed. He’s never going to use that bed again anyway.

He goes downstairs and holds his daughter (the hired girl long since fled at the empty look in his eyes when he returned), and cries quietly so as not to wake her up.

He refuses the gold, when Rumplestiltskin comes the next day to collect his precious device. It’s blood money, to him, and he will not take it.

He thinks about burning the hat. He doesn’t - can’t bring himself to - because even though the hat is what killed her, it’s also what let him find her and gave him everything good in his life for three years, and even though he will never use it again, he can’t destroy it.

He sells the house, full of memories that flood him with pain and guilt, and takes Grace and disappears into the woods. Grace is his world. Grace is the only thing that keeps him sane.

_So if you’re basically the Mad Hatter..._

_I’m not crazy._

Before he leaves the village, he buries his wife under a blank headstone. He could have the false name, Alice, that the people there knew her by carved on it, but he doesn’t. She had so many names in so many different realms; to limit her to only one would be to call her less than she was. He has a white rosebush planted on the grave instead, ignoring the Rumplestiltskin-like laughter in his memories.

He is sure this is the worst pain he will ever feel, as long as Grace is still breathing. He has not yet been trapped by the woman who murdered his wife, forced to sew a million useless hats as he sweats through the coat he was married in. He has not yet awoken in an unfamiliar world where his daughter does not know him, and discovered the DVDs in his living room with pictures of her on the cases, when her hair was still golden. He has not sat through watching the woman he loves in danger and kissing other men, and endured the pain because this is all he has left of her.

_Okay, so I get the hats and the tea, but where does the Doctor Who fit into all this?, the savior will ask him, stabbing a needle into a half-finished hat._

_He won’t answer._

Today, he holds his daughter close to keep from breaking apart, and whispers every name she ever had except one.

His Elphaba. His Daisy. His Alice.

His Rose.

**Author's Note:**

> (hides)


End file.
